By Dr. Graham A. Colditz

Siteman Cancer Center

Ultra-processed foods. It’s not a term many of us heard 10, or even five, years ago. But that’s starting to change. We now see it in news stories and posts on social media. And there’s good reason for that.

Even as more ultra-processed foods fill grocery store shelves, we’re also learning more about their possible health risks.

So, what are these foods exactly? While a precise definition can vary a bit depending on who’s talking about them, there are a few simple ways to identify many ultra-processed foods.

“Put simply, if you don’t see a food’s main ingredients in their natural forms — like grain, vegetables and meat, it is highly likely to be an ultra-processed food,” said Yikyung Park, professor in the Division of Public Health Sciences at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. “Ultra-processed foods are highly manipulated and contain many added ingredients and additives. In most cases, we cannot make ultra-processed foods at home.”

Examples include: soda (sugary and diet), lunch meat, instant noodles, instant soup, sausage, hot dogs, frozen meals (including pizza and burritos), many store-bought cakes and sweets, and even most breakfast cereals.

Eating higher amounts of ultra-processed foods is associated with a higher risk of several serious conditions, including obesity, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, poor sleep, poor mental health — including anxiety and depression — and premature death, Park continued.

How ultra-processed foods increase these risks likely relates to their collection of ingredients. They tend to be high in those ingredients we should limit in a healthy diet and low in those we should focus on.

They can be high in calories, salt, unhealthy fats and added sugar and sweeteners, which can cause long-term inflammation in the body, disrupt the normal function of our metabolism and impact the development and release of neurotransmitters that play roles in mood disorders, such as depression, Park said.

Ultra-processed foods also tend to be very low in fiber, another potential negative. Higher fiber diets help promote a healthy microbiome, which is the collection of bacteria and other microorganisms in our gut that helps keep many processes in the body working normally, Park said. Eating lower-fiber, ultra-processed foods can have the opposite effect.

Switching from pre-packaged or fast foods to less-processed choices is one easy way to cut back on ultra-processed foods. Instead of frozen French fries or chips, choose a bag of nuts or buy raw popcorn and pop it in a pan at home. Instead of a frozen bean burrito, buy some tortillas, beans and cheese and make your own. In place of breakfast cereals, which can have refined, processed grains and many other ingredients, choose oatmeal, which is a simple whole grain.

These switches may take some extra effort at first, but it gets easier the more we do it, and often we can find that the less-processed options taste just as good — maybe even better — than the more processed foods.

Start with a small goal of cutting back on a couple of ultra-processed foods. Then, build from there. Small changes have real health benefits and can also lead to bigger changes and improvements down the road.

Whether we’re new to cutting back on ultra-processed foods or have been doing it for a while, Park shared one quick way to identify the types of foods we should try to steer clear of to improve our overall health. And all it takes is a glance at the food label.

“If the ingredient list is very long and you don’t recognize those ingredients, it’s better not to eat that food,” Park concluded.

Dr. Graham A. Colditz, associate director of prevention and control at Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, is an internationally recognized leader in cancer prevention and the creator of the 8ightWays® to Prevent Cancer series.